Crackpot Palace

by Jeffrey Ford

  The journey to Hekston may have been beautiful, especially that time of year, but the town itself held a bad old memory that never faded, no matter how many years had passed or how many times Stan visited there on business. It had happened sometime after he’d started with de Vries, in the winter of ’21. The road was dirt back then. The doctor was summoned by the police about a murder, the victim of which they’d just discovered. At that time, Stan worked in the doctor’s office and only assisted him in the autopsy room. This time, de Vries had said, “I want you to come along.” Stan was excited at the prospect. The murderer was still at large.

  The victim, Mrs. Obalan, a large, middle-aged woman, bloated, with skin the palest green, lay in a blood-drenched sheer nightgown on her dining room table. Her throat was slit and a chunk of flesh had been torn from her upper arm, another from her left cheek. De Vries hadn’t been in the room a minute before he pointed to the brutal wounds and said, “Teeth marks.” Sullivan, Hekston’s chief of police, a big, dull-looking man with a neck beard, leaned closer to see what the doctor was indicating. He nodded. “Are ya saying he ate her?” De Vries pointed to a pool of vomit on the floor. “I’m afraid it was a repast too rich,” said the coroner with a smile. Stan could hardly bear the sight of the woman’s remains, but when the mess on the floor was pointed out, he got dizzy. He’d seen men slaughtered by the dozen in France and nearly died himself, but this was something else entirely. He backed away into the living room of the apartment and just made it to the couch before passing out.

  Later, while the doctor was filling out paperwork in Sullivan’s office and Stan was sipping a cup of black coffee that the chief had promised, “always helps when you’re caught between a shit and a sweat,” one of the Hekston cops came in and said, “We got a report Obalan is holed up in that old carriage house behind the church.” The chief took his feet off the desk and grabbed his hat. Standing, he said, “You want to come along, Doc?” De Vries said, “Of course.” He and Stan rode in the back of the chief’s car. The officer who’d brought the news sat up front in the passenger seat.

  Night was falling fast and it had begun to lightly snow when they pulled up in front of the church. There was a patrol car there and a cop standing by the corner of the building. Sullivan got out of the car holding a flashlight. He drew his gun and motioned for de Vries and Stan to follow at a distance. As they came up to the corner of the church, the cop who’d been standing lookout turned and put his finger to his lips. He pointed toward the carriage house, and whispered, “In there. I seen him moving around before it started to get dark.”

  Sullivan and his men trotted across the open field. They held up outside the broken door and the flashlight beam came on. As the police entered the dilapidated building, de Vries grabbed Stan’s arm and pulled him out of the sheltering shadows of the church. He fell once as they crossed the field, but the doctor helped him up and supported him the rest of the way. By the time the coroner and his apprentice reached the carriage house the police had already passed through two rooms. In the third, an empty garage, Sullivan and his men stood just inside the doorway. The chief pointed the flashlight into a corner of the darkness. There sat a heavyset man in his late forties, balding, with a gray mustache, his back against the wall. He wore a white, sleeveless undershirt, the front covered in dried blood, which was also smeared across his lips and cheeks.

  He stared, glassy-eyed, into the beam of light, and said, “She made me sick.”

  Sullivan aimed and fired. Stan didn’t have a chance to look away. The bullet struck Obalan in the right temple, slamming his head back into the wall. His body twitched twice but remained seated. The wound smoked for a moment, appearing in the glow of the flashlight like a spirit leaving the body. There was hardly any blood.

  After the echo of the gunshot died away, de Vries said, “Innocent until proven guilty, I assume.”

  The chief shrugged and said, “A clear-cut case of resisting arrest.”

  Nothing nearly as harrowing would happen on the job again. In the years that followed, Stan learned that the position of coroner was a relatively quiet one, lonely afternoons spent discovering and recording the secrets of those in whom life had lost interest. Still, the memory of that day in Hekston, with its pathetic horror and de Vries turning a blind eye to Obalan’s summary execution, never diminished.

  Stan pulled into town and headed down toward the river. Bad memory notwithstanding, Hekston didn’t look that much different from Midian. People were on the street, going about their business, steam billowed from the factory. He passed the grade school and saw a gang of kids gathered in a ring, playing at some game. A flag flew outside the municipal building.

  He found the Windemere, a sagging wooden establishment with a wraparound porch, on the bank of the Susquehanna. Its sky-blue paint was chipping and its windowpanes were smeared. Stan figured it had obviously been a house at one time prior to the turn of the century. As he climbed the steps to the front door, he checked his watch to make sure he wasn’t late.

  Inside, it was dark, and it took a moment for his vision to adjust. He stood in the entrance and watched the forms of three old men on stools cohere out of the shadows. The light behind the bar was dim. A white-haired woman in a plaid flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up, waved Stan over and said, “What’ll you have?”

  “I’m just here to meet someone,” he said.

  “A stout fella?”

  Stan nodded. “That could be him.”

  “Go on,” she said and nodded toward the dark back of the place.

  He stepped around some tables and peered down a long row of booths. Way at the end, just barely visible, a leg jutted into the aisle. As he approached that table, he heard Groot’s voice.

  “You’re punctual,” he said.

  “The job drives you to it,” said Stan as he took a seat on the bench across from the detective. “Who are we hiding from?”

  Groot said, “I gave Loaf a few pictures of the girl to pass around Midian and I came up here at daybreak. I showed the girl’s picture everywhere. No one knows her. Never seen her. I drove over to where Hek’s Creek comes off the Susquehanna and it’s moving pretty fast. By then it was around ten thirty. I decided to stop and get some lunch, so I came in here for a sip. While the woman up there was drawing my beer, I showed her the photo. I asked her, ‘Do you recognize this person?’ She said, ‘No.’ But when I went to sit down, she told me, ‘Wait, let me see that again.’ She looks at it, smiles, and says, ‘Yeah, I’ve seen her.’ ”

  “Where?” asked Stan.

  Groot took out his cigarettes and put one in his mouth. He flipped the lighter open and sparked it. Instead of lighting the butt, though, he held the flame aloft, toward the wall. “Right here,” he said.

  The flame illuminated a small painting Stan hadn’t previously noticed. He stood and leaned in close to the picture, careful not to let Groot set his tie on fire. It was a portrait of a young woman with long black hair, wearing a white gown. She stood on an oddly shaped boulder that had a profile like a face, an outcropping of a nose. She and her perch glowed, as if standing in moonlight, against a black background darker than her hair and sparsely dotted with stars. The lighter went out, but a moment later Groot managed to revive the flame. “The smile, Coroner,” he said.

  No matter how many times Stan looked away and then back at the painted face, he saw his Alina, exactly as she’d looked on the autopsy table. “It’s her,” he said.

  Groot closed the lighter and slipped it back in his coat pocket.

  “You know why no one knows her?” asked Groot.

  Stan sat and shook his head.

  “I found a date in the bottom-right-hand corner. 1896.”

  “She looks the same after almost forty years?”

  Groot took a sip of his beer. “The whole thing’s cocked up,” he said.

  “Does the bartender know who did the painting?”

  “She said it’s always been here, as long as she can remember. This
place was a bar for quite a while before Prohibition, and even in the dry years it masqueraded as a restaurant with a speakeasy in the basement. What I need to find out is who lived here when it was a residence, but that might be hard to come by.”

  “You’ve got to find some old-timers,” said Stan.

  Groot nodded.

  The detective took the painting off the wall and carried it in two hands to the bar. Stan followed him. “I got to confiscate this as evidence,” he said to the bartender.

  “No one’s gonna miss it,” she said. “I’m probably the only one who knows it’s there.”

  “I’ll return it to you when the investigation is complete,” said Groot. “Do you know anybody in town who might be familiar with local history, going back a ways?”

  The bartender grabbed a coaster and a pencil. As she wrote, she said, “Try this guy. Joe Venner. He’s old as dirt, but he’s got a good memory. Still comes in here on the days he can get his body out of bed. I’ll call him and tell him you’re coming over. He’ll be glad for the company.” She handed the cardboard circle to the detective. He shifted the painting under one arm, said, “Thanks,” and looked at the address.

  Out in the parking lot, Groot said to Stan, “Did I hear her describe me as ‘stout’?”

  “Yeah. ‘Stout fella,’ ” said Stan.

  Groot spat. “You want to go talk to this guy?”

  “The old man?”

  “We’ll show him the painting.”

  They took Groot’s Model B. Ten minutes later, they were in a furnished room over a delicatessen, sitting at a table with the venerable Joe Venner, an obviously shrunken man, curled like an autumn leaf. He wore a moth-eaten cardigan over a flannel shirt and sipped at a pint of Overholt. Stan noticed that the man’s glasses were even thicker in the frame and lenses than Cynthia’s. The space was cramped beneath slanted ceilings of exposed wood. There was one small window at knee height that lit a patch of floor. The old man had a bed, a desk, a bookcase, and a trunk used as a dresser. There was a single bare bulb suspended from a cord overhead.

  “What do you want to know?” asked Venner.

  “Can you tell us who this is?” said Groot, holding up the painting. “The picture is dated 1896.” Setting it down in front of Venner, he said, “What about the girl? Do you remember her?”

  The old man winced, tilted his glasses an inch downward, and stared at the portrait of the woman on the rock. He touched a trembling finger to his lips and then shook it at the painting. “I don’t know who she is,” he said.

  “Do you know any local artist who might have painted it?” asked Groot.

  “I don’t know shit about art,” said Venner. “I worked every day of my life till I couldn’t work anymore, first in the fields, then in the loom. The novels I read have pictures on the covers. That’s what I know about art.”

  “Okay,” said the detective. “Thanks for your time.” He reached forward to lift the painting off the table.

  “Not so fast,” said the old man, putting a hand on Groot’s right forearm. “The big rock in the picture is a real place. I remember it from when I was a kid.” Venner went silent for a time, dredging his memory.

  Stan asked, “Do you remember where?”

  The old man nodded. “It’s in the woods halfway between here and Verruk. Nobody lives out that way, so the rock’s probably still there. Some people called it the Wish Head and some called it the Witch Head, depending on what side of the Susquehanna you lived on. I went there a couple of times with my parents. We walked for miles over fields and through the woods to get to it. People came from all around to climb up on the head. There was a place for your first foot in the groove of stone that was the chin of the face. There was a place to hold on in the right eye, and the nose was like a platform. You were supposed to get up there on top, and this part I can’t remember for sure. But it was either that you made a wish, or you prayed to God, something along those lines.”

  “If you wished up there, it came true?” asked Groot.

  Venner laughed and sipped at his bottle. He nodded. “I suppose that was the idea. People said it was ‘ground magic,’ like it comes up out of the earth through the head.”

  “Do you remember what you wished for?” asked Stan.

  “Only the one of them. I must have been ten or eleven.”

  “Did it come true?” asked Groot.

  “Hell no, I wished I’d never get old,” said Venner.

  Stan let out a laugh.

  “I whispered my wish to my father that night before going to bed. I didn’t understand then why he laughed,” said the old man.

  “There’s young and then there’s young,” said Groot. “You’re young in the head, Mr. Venner.”

  “A very sharp recall,” said Stan.

  “You two don’t know yet,” he said. “When you get old, you think more about the past than about what you did five minutes ago. Time changes.”

  “We’re gonna go out to the Wish Head, can you draw us a map?”

  It was midafternoon, the temperature had dropped and the sky had grown darker. A strong wind blew leaves across the field in the woods. Positioned in the very center of the open expanse in the trees, as if consciously placed there, was a flat-topped granite behemoth that really did have the contours of a human head. It took no stretch of the imagination to see that, nor to read the expression it wore, one of subtle contempt. Groot stood face-to-face with the boulder, jotting notes in a pad.

  “What are you writing?” asked Stan. “It’s a boulder.”

  “My impressions,” said the detective.

  “What have you got so far?”

  “Big gray rock,” said Groot.

  “Do you feel any ground magic?” asked Stan.

  The detective cocked his head as if listening for it. Stan looked back from the center of the field at the woods. A gust of wind brought the first drops of rain.

  “Maybe,” said Groot.

  “I know what you mean,” said Stan. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Hold on a minute,” said Groot. “We’re not done yet.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” said Stan.

  “I’m too old and too fat. By the time I made it up there, I’d have to wish for my last breath.”

  “You’re talking to a man with a fake foot.”

  “Think about how wonderful it is up there.”

  “I’m afraid of heights.”

  “You can make a wish,” said the detective.

  “Oh, shit,” said Stan and took off his jacket and necktie and handed them to Groot. As he approached the stone face, he tried to remember what Venner had said about climbing it. He immediately found the groove in the lips of the old frowning face and secured his good foot. He hoisted himself up against the rock and was able to grab the depression in the eyehole. From there it was a mad scrabble upward.

  “Very athletic,” called Groot when Stan reached the nose.

  Working to catch his breath, Stan said, “If I get struck by lightning, tell Cynthia I love her.”

  “Will do,” said the detective.

  Stan turned toward the forehead. “This is crazy,” he said, and then went into a crouch. A second later, he sprang upward against the hard rock and grabbed for the edge of the boulder’s flat top. He managed to get a handhold, and then swung his leg up over the ledge. From there, he used his arms to pull himself forward onto the crown of the head.

  Groot applauded.

  Stan stood up and, a little dizzy from the height, stepped away from the edge. He gazed out across the field and felt the wind and a light rain on his face. “Make a wish,” he heard from below.

  “If it comes true, you might not be there when I come down,” Stan called back. He looked up into the dark sky. “A wish,” he whispered, and thought about what he wanted. The first idea he came to was to pray for Cynthia to marry him. But just as quickly came the thought, “What if it came true?” That’s when he hit upon something mor
e practical. He closed his eyes, raised his hands out at his sides, and made his plea to the powers of the earth that the ghost pain in his foot be exorcized and leave him forever. Doubt ruled his mind, but somewhere in one of its hidden corners existed the anticipation that he’d feel something, a twitch of electricity in his joints, a fluttering of the heart. What he felt, after giving it two solid minutes, was nothing. He opened his eyes and realized the rain was falling steadily now.

  “How goes it?” called the detective.

  “Less than magical,” said Stan, who lowered himself to his knees and crawled back to the edge.

  “Watch your step,” said Groot as Stan dangled off the nose, trying to achieve a foothold in the lips.

  “There,” said Stan, finally anchoring himself in the groove. As he let his weight down, his dress shoe slipped on the wet rock and he fell backward onto the ground.

  “What did you wish for?” asked Groot, helping him up.

  Stan stood, his white shirt and trousers marked with dirt, and arched his back. “I’ll tell you if it comes true,” he said.

  The detective handed him his jacket and tie. “Did anything happen up there?”

  “Yeah, I banged my knees a dozen times and got cuts all over my hands.”

  “But ground magic?” said Groot as he took out his notebook.

  By the time they made it back through the woods, and to the car, darkness had fallen and the rain had become a downpour. On the return to Hekston, the radio played quietly, and the wipers beat beneath the music. The detective drove slowly through the storm. “Deer all over the road this time of year,” he said.

  “I know,” said Stan. “Take your time.”

  “We did a lot today,” said Groot. “But really, at the end of it all, I’ve got nothing but a big rock.”

  “You’ve got the painting,” said Stan.

  “That has to be a coincidence.”

  “The fact that it’s the spitting image of a young woman in the icebox in the basement of Midian General or that you found it?”